In a landmark achievement that promises to accelerate comparative genomics efforts, and to serve as the basis for progress in numerous other areas of science research, including agriculture, human health and medicine, and complex disease genetics, scientists recently reported the sequencing and early analysis of the chicken genome, the first bird genome to be completely sequenced. The sequencing was carried out using state-of-the-art sequencers, reagents, and software from Applied Biosystems.

The discovery of small non-coding RNAs capable of repressing, silencing, or even enhancing gene expression continues to inspire researchers who study the regulation of gene expression.  One of those researchers, Dr. Victor Ambros, Professor of Genetics, Dartmouth Medical School, is also one of the first scientists to discover microRNAs—a class of small non-coding RNAs that regulate gene expression. Recently, Dr. Ambros’s lab has begun to apply TaqMan^®-based real-time PCR assays from Applied Biosystems to his lab’s investigations of how microRNAs influence the fate of cells in flies, worms, and more recently in human brain cancer tumors.
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For drug developers, being able to see where a drug candidate is distributed in a targeted tissue helps them to better assess the potential value of that compound as a pharmaceutical product. To that end, one scientist, Dr. Walter Korfmacher (photo), and researchers from Schering-Plough are now employing mass spectrometry systems from Applied Biosystems/MDS SCIEX to apply a technique known as MS (mass spectrometry) tissue imaging to obtain detailed information about the spatial distribution of drug candidate compounds throughout tissue samples.